


a series of imperceptible shifts

by worry



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Extended Metaphors, Multi, prose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-17 11:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11274336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worry/pseuds/worry
Summary: I’M ALL ALONE  / I DON’T KNOW IF THIS ME AT ALL / OR JUST SOME GHOST OF ME / THAT I DREAMED UP / JUST TO SING MYSELF TO SLEEPLet's say that love is like a cluster of stars.





	a series of imperceptible shifts

**Author's Note:**

> This is composed of a few separate character-study ficlets I wrote, and then decided to put them all together (at the interlude, which is when it becomes a more linear story. I say story incredibly loosely. Incredibly.)

track zero;

The sun is a man. Let’s say that the sun is a man or a woman or something else and  _ let’s say that the sun has seen worlds burn and people perish and destruction rising from the ground like old folklore rising from the ground.  _ Let’s say:

 

The sun is a man and he has lived oh God  _ so many lives  _ and has loved every single life and every single encounter made in each one;  _ say there’s a boy crashing a car, say there is a different boy who stays with him for many of these lives, say there’s a girl who ticks ticks ticks like clocks  _ **_oh no_ ** _ like explosives, say there’s the moon.  _ We’ll get to those later. After all, isn’t it the moon that calms the sun? Let’s say:

 

The moon is many things. Being the sun implies:  _ warmth, and light, and moral purity, and life, and everything in the universe impossible to truly obtain.  _ Being the sun implies: will. The sun is a man. The sun is the sun. The man is burning like the sun burns and the warmth from his energy warms the entire Earth, and every moment on Earth in its future and in its history and  _ oh how close can you get to the sun before it burns you along with it?  _ The answer lies in the moon. Let’s say:

 

Let’s say:

 

Let’s say:

 

Let’s stop. Stop talking just  _ stop talking stop,  _ there is something freezing in space and it isn’t the universe’s lack of deep breaths. Take a deep breath  _ my love my love my love my everything I have cared about you forever and I have never stopped caring  _ because this story is complex, every timeline a pocket in a lung, every timeline two holes for each heart and sickness, every instance of interaction a longing for home again, every touch only hostile on the surface. 

 

Everyone knows the barebones of this story: there are two friends and two lovers and then two strangers and then two enemies. What if you decided to end the world, what if you dared to defy, what if you  _ took the story and balled it all up like the universe and took the bold step of being everything?  _ Chew on every story bone. Sharpen every story bone. What if you felt it all?

 

The sun is a man. The sun does not want to be called the sun, or a man (who would? who would want to show those scars?  _ this man’s body, underneath it all, is scar tissue. Nothing remains of the original. The only thing that has stayed the same, through every life, is the moon)  _ and so the sun calls himself: the Doctor.

 

There’s a discrepancy. There’s something filling the heart holes. There’s something that just doesn’t make sense. There’s something dead in the ocean, alive on the sand, floating in the air. There’s always something. There’s always something and  _ then and then and then and then  _ **_well_ ** _ there is always the moon. _

 

Let’s say that the moon is also a man, and also everything. Everything in the universe! Everything in his eyes, on the tip of his tongue, brushing over his hands! It’s too much. The stars inducing a meltdown, the vastness of the cosmos too much to comprehend, even for someone who has lived in that vastness, made a home in it. So the moon deals with what is before him, the only way he knows how: sleight-of-hand, and destruction. The universe, on its own. The universe doesn’t do much. The universe has sharp teeth, but the universe is gentle; the moon wants to rip those teeth right out, the moon wants to show every inhabitant that gentleness is tiring. The moon is tired. The moon has been chasing his counterpart for so long, and he is tired. Here, leave the mouth bare. Show the sun - the  _ Doctor -  _ how it feels to be in control. Make the darkness literal. Turn corruption into something beautiful. 

 

Let’s say that the moon is a man, and the moon does not want to be called the moon. He wants something to breathe through. Pufferfish enlarge as a defense. Cats hiss as a warning, bare their teeth like baring the universe’s teeth. Even animals fear. Even the most dangerous and merciless beings know how to fear. The moon, in contrast to the Doctor, wants to show his dominance over fear, over the universe, over every merciless being. The word “doctor” implies healing, the word “doctor” implies that the Doctor is capable of doing anything besides chasing the concept of enlightenment. A perfect universe with no harm. A perfect universe where everything is Pure, and submissive, and Beautiful. Downfall: compassion. Talk to the downfall as if it is a person. A downfall is a downfall and a weakness is a weakness and the sun is only capable of doing one, singular thing: burning.

 

The word “master”, however, implies entirely the opposite. So there’s the moon and the sun and the Doctor and the Master and the universe in both of their hands. That’s the beauty of being a planet, you know; you are surrounded by the stars. You’re in the middle of the universe and the universe doesn’t have any way to defend itself.

 

Let’s say that there’s a love story gone wrong. Let’s stay that there’s a love story as perfect as the universe. Let’s say that there is a better place, an afterlife, someone who stays with the Doctor, the sun, travelling with him and never leaving. Suppose you could drill a hole so deep into someone’s chest, right between their hearts, that it will never heal. New skin grows over the wound-that-isn’t-a-wound, but its bearer rips it off out of habit. It never heals. Suppose you live inside of a fairy tale where the animals don’t talk and the sky is everything that isn’t blue. Suppose you could fall in love without falling. Suppose you could love in a way that doesn’t involve loving. Let’s say that there’s a love story, and the love story is written in epics, carved into caves, turned into prophecies. Let’s say that an eclipse happens when the moon and the sun spar. Let’s say that an eclipse happens when the moon and the sun learn how to give in. Suppose you were born with the precise ability to control yourself and bide your actions, and then someone tears that out of you like ripping teeth out of a dead animal’s mouth as some kind of trophy. Suppose that eclipses happen when the moon and the sun, the Doctor and the Master, are on top of each other in a way that the oracles will never understand. Devote your life to the Gods. Love overwhelmingly. Let’s say that the sun is a man. Let’s say that the moon is a man. Let’s repeat the story again until they get it right. There is always a correct way to love. Let’s repeat the story until the moon dies in the sun’s arms. Let’s repeat the story until there’s no one left to tell it to.

 

Let’s say that there is a love story that is older than stories. 

 

_ track one; _

 

He lives too many times. Or: he will live too many times, he may be young and small  _ now  _ but he can see it in his reflection, in the big-bang, in the apples and pencils and books: a man who cannot stop himself, a man who ruins like carving apples into objects, someone who does not obey. He steals life for himself because of the addiction--love, for him, is like an addiction. No one will ever understand how much he craves it. No one will ever  _ want to.  _ It is one downfall to love, it is another downfall to never let that love stop. Oh. Oh: you don’t love the universe, you fear it. You are supposed to fear it.

 

He holds his makeshift, drawn on family close. Never quite lets go, keeps a picture of them for a very long time, a  _ very long time,  _ almost—

 

_ track two; _

 

Let’s say that love is like a cluster of stars. How many people have longed to visit the stars? To leave Earth, to leave behind their planet like cracking a shell and be one with the celestial, celestial, celestial. What is celestial? Let’s say that love is like the death of a star, and the birth of a star, all at once. Let’s say that there is a boy, and this is where it gets  _ interesting!  _ Interesting means looking at the stars and the boy and thinking:  _ how many people have longed to visit love?  _

 

Jamie touches often, in the way you’d touch a star; gently, with wonder buzzing on your fingertips.

  
  


_ track three; _

 

Let’s say the sun is a man and the moon is also a man and and and  _ eventually, the sun must fizzle out _ . It becomes small  small  small,  a complete turn of events, a complete galactic shift. Ask again:  _ how many people have longed to visit the stars? _

  
  


_ interlude; _

 

Somewhere a planet is born.

 

Somewhere there is a child who yearns to step foot on said planet, put his feet into the mud and get himself all dirty. The joke is that he has always been “dirty”.

 

And years go by. Billions of them, swirling up in a mind. It’s funny how time can be circular, events fixed and events repeating, over and over. A piano key being touched. A song played on a guitar, neverending. No race ever learns from their mistakes. So the planet grows! It flourishes, spreads itself out. It evolves for the better, its inhabitants learn to adapt. The child thinks about adapting in every stage of his life, even when he is big and big and big and a fable, even when he is tiny and tiny and tiny and especially when he is on the cusp of his demise. He falls onto a bad road and thinks:  _ I can survive, _

 

_ look at the catastrophies, look at the people here that have suffered, look at the way they a d a p t e d, _

 

_ look at their graves, deeply missed.  _ He falls onto grass and thinks:

 

_ I have loved and lost and loved again and it never ever ever ever ever!!!! stops. Say that love is like a cluster of stars, and within every star is a colony of people, just waiting to be loved. _

 

Adapting means loving. Loving means adapting. Loving is a catastrophe that one survives, crawling out of missed graves with skinned knees and broken fingers.

 

Loving is—

 

_ track five; _

 

Tegan and Nyssa and Adric walk into his newly formed hearts, hand in hand. Or rather: Tegan and Nyssa walk into his newly formed hearts, with the zero cabinet on their shoulders & love--or duty, if there is any difference--in their respective, singular hearts. Adric, however, walks into the Master’s trap, or the atmosphere of a different planet, or the atmosphere of the moon. Let’s say that love is like a cluster of stars. They have - five hearts - between the four of them, which means that they’d make a whole galaxy with their love combined, a galaxy made out of love’s stars, and four whole planets to tie the whole thing together. 

 

Everyone

 

needs a heart. At least one, to hold the love in. Sometimes you can feel it beating in your chest, like

 

a tiny flock of birds inside of the garden that makes you, protecting the sacred Heart-of-You, pumping and pumping. This is good: it means you’re alive. This is good: being alive means that you can love. You have it in your grasp (unless you’re a Dalek and so on and so on, but—). Let’s say that love is like

 

tiny bits of starstuff freckling on your skin.

 

They do things for him, like scale the entire outerwalls of Castrovalva. Like love unconditionally. Like love each other. Like sacrifice themselves. Like be everything that he just

 

cannot

 

be.

 

(Adric doesn’t talk about it much but he  _ knows:  _ trauma. The Doctor knows. Trauma at the Master’s hand. Etched into every bone, the moon. Etched into every surface of his body, sunlight. It’s like throwing or hitting a ball and hoping it lands perfectly, just perfectly, in the court of hearts; a series of imperceptible shifts formed around the Doctor and the Master, everything else caught inbetween.)

  
  
  


_ track five, part two; _

  
  


_ Loss enters you as if it is an infection, an emergency with blaring lights and loud loud loud!!!! noises, a deadly skin-touch. It bites you and turns you into yourself, a folding corridor with no hearts, an endless walk in the TARDIS. Loss enters, makes a nest. Loss enters, sharpens its teeth. Loss enters; he can feel it, wriggling inside of him, grasping firm on one, one, one heart and leaving the other to dry out in the scorching mess of the sun. _

 

_ track five, part three; _

  
  


He isn’t like Jamie or the Master or anyone the Doctor has known; this is what makes him interesting, he walks right into the heart (heart!!!) of the TARDIS and  _ touches it,  _ both the TARDIS controls and a heart. 

  
  


The first thing he says/said/will say to Turlough is: who are you. Who are  _ you.  _ This is, or will be, before the interest forms like a star being swallowed inside of him. He gets it: he’ll swallow every part of himself just to keep the light

 

from burning out.

 

“My name’s Turlough,” says the man who is Turlough, when the Doctor takes him back behind the control room. “Who are  _ you? _ ”

 

“I’m the Doctor,” replies the man who is the Doctor; Turlough closes his eyes momentarily, breathes something to himself. Then: “Not to sound accusatory, but how did you get here?”

 

“I saw something interesting in a field by my school,” he replies. “So I simply… walked in.” A wink buried in wishful thinking. “It brought me to this place.”

 

“Well, you’re very lost. We’re in a spaceship. Two, in fact, since we’re inside the TARDIS.”

 

His eyes widen; perhaps a little bit too wide, perhaps a little bit too innocent. He looks too innocent and simultaneously tarnished by everything the Doctor can imagine: loss, pain, trauma again. Similarity. 

 

“A spaceship?” he asks. “You’re kidding.”

 

“Not kidding at all.”

 

“That’s interesting.”

 

Usually: a different response. We’re in space. We’re travelling through the stars or love or both clusters, watching a heart pump outside of the TARDIS. It’s - interesting. It certainly is.

 

“What are you studying in school, then, Turlough?” he asks abruptly, curiosity killing him, curiosity drowning him, curiosity being curiosity and burning him. 

 

(Similarity.)

 

“I was held back,” he says, slight cough. “I’m twenty three. They must not think I’m very smart… though later I’ve decided I plan on studying… um. Biology.”

 

“Biology is certainly an interesting field of study. I’m partial to xenobiology myself.”

 

“Xenobiology, Doctor?”

 

“Alien biology.” He pats Turlough’s shoulder like touching statues like touching something fragile like touching something sacred like touching his own skin, bare.

 

They walk back to the control room. The interest does not die.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is newer who lmao can you tell i need to rewatch a billion cw serials


End file.
